(A/N) It's still pynchweek somewhere right?! Lol
Sorry as always that this took so long (and sorry to end on angst omg), but I hope it's worth the wait!! Thank you so much to everyone who has liked or reblogged or just read my entries, it really means a lot to me!! And I've really enjoyed looking at everyone else's entries too, it's been super fun! :)
Thanks for a wonderful pynch week! <3
At exactly midnight, Ronan jerks awake, eyes wide and his chest heaving.
He hasn’t brought anything back this time, but the nightmare had been a bad one: a sea of dead bodies, each one bearing the face of someone he loved, washed in blood and guts and fire.
Unthinkingly, he reaches out for Adam, only to remember that Adam is at school, probably writing an essay or some shit.
The reality of it hits Ronan hard. Adam isn’t here. He can’t make sure Adam is safe. He can’t be sure that Adam hasn’t really been killed by one of his night horrors, or by Ronan’s own hands, or by some other unknown entity. No one is here, and if Adam isn’t here, then who can convince him that anyone he loves is still alive? Maybe they’re all gone, just like Adam.
In a panic, Ronan reaches for his phone. He keeps it on him more often now because the few texts Adam sends him each day are the only things that keep him going since he left for Princeton a month ago. He dials his number and waits on bated breath for Adam to answer. With each ring that goes by, the stone in Ronan’s chest expands until it feels like he can’t breathe. He’s dead – this time he’s really dead, gone, unmade—
“Ronan?” Adam finally picks up on the fourth ring, his voice sleepy.
Ronan squeezes his eyes shut. He’s alive, he’s okay, he’s talking to him, he isn’t bleeding out somewhere…
He almost says no—the truth—until he realizes: he woke him up. He’s interfering with his sleep and Adam hardly sleeps as it is; he doesn’t need Ronan ruining the one night he actually goes to bed before midnight.
Ronan lets out a harsh breath, digs a palm into his eye. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay.”
Adam hums. He barely sounds awake. “Did something happen?”
“No, I just…I just thought I’d call.” Adam must be able to hear the shaking in his voice, the lie coming out rough and unpracticed.
They talk about mundane things for a while, and with each word that comes out of Adam’s mouth Ronan feels his chest slowly unwind, the nightmare slowly bleeding out of his body. He repeats it in his head like a mantra: Adam is okay, Adam is okay, Adam is okay.
But it doesn’t change how much he misses him, or the pain in his heart when he thinks about how talking over the phone can never be enough. Maybe if he never hung up, but Adam’s already falling back asleep, so Ronan whispers good night to him and hangs up the phone.
After that, he lays in the dark and lets the tears fall.
Adam sends him updates about his life every day, about new people that he meets and his classes and a funny thing his professor said during lecture. Ronan loves hearing from Adam, is relieved that he’s taking the time to tell him about these things, but sometimes he can’t bear how lonely and miserable it makes him feel. Sometimes he has to pretend he doesn’t see the messages for a while to give him time to get his messy thoughts in order before he replies so he doesn’t say something he’ll regret.
Sometimes it just makes him feel too broken being reminded that he’s the only one struggling.
He goes about his day, week, month, life working and working and working. He works until sunup to sundown, feeding the animals, harvesting the crops, fixing the damn fence so he can get horses in the far-off fields of the barns. He helps Opal carve out spaces for herself and they dream in the dream barn, slowly molding Cabeswater back into existence. He rests in Declan’s room—because he can’t stand to be in the bed that reminds him of Adam—but he doesn’t sleep. He can’t sleep. If he does, he’ll fall to pieces again.
He tells Adam about the farm, about their goat giving birth and the people he meets when he sells things at the farmer’s market. He keeps him updated about Cabeswater’s progress and what he’s been dreaming about, because Adam won’t stop asking him about it after he saw the black goop drip from Ronan’s body again.
He doesn’t tell Adam that he hasn’t been sleeping. He doesn’t tell him how much it hurts to talk on the phone sometimes.
When he finally does crash from exhaustion, he wakes up at midnight again with the same fears in his chest and throat. He calls Adam again in desperation.
“Hey, Ronan,” Adam says. He’s awake this time, but his voice is quiet, like he’s trying not to disturb someone. “What’s up?”
The words strangle Ronan. He can’t tell him – if he does, Adam will be worried, and if he’s worried he might want to come home, and if he’s home for even a second it’ll be even harder when he leaves again. Because Adam will always want to leave; he’s having too much fun at college to stay at the Barns with Ronan forever. And Ronan doesn’t want to make the choice hard for him. Adam deserves to be chasing his dreams, not dragged down by Ronan and his problems.
He takes a deep, harsh breath. “Nothing. Just thought I’d call.”
“Okay,” Adam says. “But now’s kind of a bad time…”
The idea of Adam hanging up soon panics Ronan, and he clutches his phone tighter, as if that will somehow make him stay. “I miss you,” he chokes out, hates how pathetic he sounds as he says it.
“I miss you too,” Adam says, quietly, “but I need to go back to my group, we have a project to finish… Can I call you back later?”
Ronan swallows back the tears, the suffocating fear and loneliness and insecurity. Of course he’s busy – he should’ve known. He shouldn’t have called. “…Yeah, go finish your project, nerd.”
“Thanks. I’ll call you later, okay?” he says, and hangs up.
Ronan keeps the phone to his ear for a long time after that, pretending that he can still hear Adam on the other end. When even that becomes too much, he turns the ringer up as loud as it’ll go—so he doesn’t miss it—and tosses it onto the bed beside him.
Two months go by, then three.
Whoever said time eases pain didn’t know jack shit because it never gets easier. Instead, he seems to miss Adam more and more each day. Adam calls less and less as he gets bogged down by work and studying. Ronan gets back into street racing to ease the pain and loneliness eating away inside of him but lays off the alcohol because he promised Adam he would. He calls the Three Musketeers more and actually stays for a while at Fox Way when he’s dropping off Opal, and it helps some, but nothing can replace Adam.
He doesn’t know how to tell him that it’s killing him not being able to see him. He doesn’t know how be less pathetic, less burdensome, less needy.
The self-hate lurking under his veins doesn’t take long to come back. He doesn’t know how to tell Adam about that, either.
“Are you coming home for the three-day weekend?” he asks on their next phone call. He’s trying very hard to keep the desperation out of his voice.
“I don’t think I can,” Adam says, making a frustrated sound in the back of his throat. Ronan has to sit down in the middle of the field. “I have to study for my midterms, and you’re too distracting.”
Ronan doesn’t laugh. “Okay.”
He doesn’t protest, because he will never interfere with Adam’s work.
“Do you want me to come back?” Adam asks. He doesn’t say ‘home’.
I always want you to come back. “Doesn’t matter what I want – you need to do your nerd shit.”
Adam is silent for a moment. “Are you okay, Ro?”
Ronan closes his eyes. “I feel like you ask me that a lot.”
“I feel like I never get a direct answer.”
“I’m fine. I just miss you.”
“I’ll be back for Thanksgiving,” Adam says. “I’ll be there for four days.”
Four goddamn days. Like that could ever be enough.
“You better do your homework in advance – homework is not allowed at the Barns,” Ronan says, because he can’t say how he really feels without crying.
Adam laughs. “I’ll do my best.”
He has to go soon after, to study and work on his essays. Ronan stays out in the field for a long time, staring at nothing, wishing he could feel nothing.
Ronan walks into the kitchen Saturday morning of the long weekend to find Adam dragging a duffle bag into the house.
For a moment, he thinks he’s dreaming. He lingers near the fridge, watching, wary. The dreams that start out like this never end well. “I thought you weren’t coming down for the long weekend?”
Adam looks angry or miserable or both as he slams his bag onto the kitchen counter. It hurts how much he obviously doesn’t want to be here. “I changed my mind.”
Self-loathing claws its way into Ronan’s throat, and just like that he’s angry, hurt, drowning. He made Adam come back. His disgusting, worthless self had sounded so needy or something over the phone that he’d made Adam feel like he had to come back to somewhere he so obviously didn’t want to be.
You stupid, worthless piece of shit.
“Well shit, Parrish, you don’t have to sound so happy about it,” Ronan snaps.
Adam looks surprised. “…I am happy. I’ve wanted to come home for weeks.”
This surprises Ronan. Adam had never said anything; he’d always seemed fine over the phone, like he wasn’t missing Ronan as much as Ronan was missing him or sad or lonely or anything that Ronan had been struggling with. He’d never even dropped hints that he wanted to come back, in fact, just the opposite: he’d always sounded like he wanted to be anywhere but at the Barns, do anything but talk to Ronan. But…he’d actually wanted to…?
Something bleeds inside of him.
Adam had called the Barns ‘home’.
“…You have?” Ronan says, can hardly believe it. “But you hardly ever call or anything—”
“I want to call you more often – I think about calling you every day,” Adam says, brushing a hand through his hair. “But I don’t call you because I’m only ever free after midnight and I know how hard it is for you to fall asleep. I would hate to wake you…”
“Adam,” Ronan interrupts, “you can call me at fucking four A.M. for all I care – sleep is never more important than you.”
“I don’t…sleep, anyway,” Ronan says, averting his eyes.
“…Ronan.” He still refuses to look at him. “Ro, are you having nightmares again?”
Ronan laughs drily, even though nothing is funny. “They never stopped.”
“Why haven’t you told me?” Adam demands. “Why don’t you call me? You know I’m always—”
“Because I don’t want to be a burden to you!” Ronan shouts. His breathing suddenly becomes shallow and he has to link his hands together behind his head and inhale and exhale slowly before he can continue. “You’re over there living your life and having a good time and I don’t want to…taint that. I don’t want you to miss the sleep you need or not finish an essay just because I’m a needy fuck—”
“I’m not having a good time!” Adam blurts. Silence falls over them for a moment before he continues, his eyes wet, “College is…horrible sometimes. I get so homesick that it feels like I’m suffocating; I miss you so goddamn much, Ronan. I miss sleeping next to you and I miss your sarcastic comments about everything and I miss you busting into the room all excited because of something you dreamed or a goat gave birth or something. I miss the Barns and the smell of the farm and Opal and the way she always tries to sneak around when she does something bad… I miss you guys. I miss being home.”
Ronan sucks in a harsh breath. Horrifyingly, his eyes are wet too. “…I didn’t know you were struggling, too. You always seemed fine over text…”
“I didn’t…I didn’t want to seem like I couldn’t do it,” Adam says, pulling at his hair. “I thought that if I admitted that I was lonely and that I hated college that it would mean I didn’t have what it took to be there and goddammit Ronan I’ve worked my whole life to get there, what was I going to do if I couldn’t do it—”
“You deserve to be there – fuck, Parrish, you deserve to be there more than anyone else in the goddamn world,” Ronan says, finally closing the space between them. He gently reaches out and runs the back of his hand along Adam’s cheek. “And you don’t need someone like me pulling you down all the time.”
“You’ve never pulled me down; you’ve encouraged me. Sometimes it feels like you’re the only thing that’s worth it.” Adam clutches Ronan’s hand at his cheek and squeezes it tightly. “I love you, Ronan. I hate being away from you.”
Ronan sucks in another breath. Horrifyingly, the tears have started falling down his cheeks. Adam has never told him he loves him before. “I love you too, Adam, so goddam much. Not being able to see you every day is killing me.”
“I-I’m sorry I never have time to call,” Adam blubs, starting to cry himself. “All I do is work and go to class and I’m just so tired…”
Ronan pulls Adam to his chest, hugging him tightly. Something releases in him as he does. “Then call me. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing – I’ll always pick up.”
“Okay,” Adam sniffs into his neck, reaching up to clutch Ronan’s shoulder blades. “I’ll come down to visit on the weekends when I can, so we can see each other more.”
“Okay.” Ronan presses a kiss into his hair. “I’ll even drop my homework ban for you.”
Adam laughs wetly into his shoulder. “It’s a deal. Just…you can call me too, okay? Always. Well…not if I’m in class I guess.”
Ronan snorts and hugs Adam tighter. “Deal.”
At exactly midnight, Ronan’s phone rings.
He’d set the Murder Squash Song specifically for a certain someone, so he doesn’t even hesitate as he reaches for his phone and accepts the call.
“Lynch,” Adam replies, “why the hell did you send me a package full of fucking dirt? I opened it while I was walking and now it’s just all over the fucking floor.”
Ronan laughs, grinning to himself in the dark. “It’s not dirt, it’s soil.”
He can practically hear Adam’s eye roll. “Please, don’t pull that bullshit on me – only soils professors think that. Why did you send it?”
“Didn’t you get the other package?”
Ronan swears. The goddamn post office is messing up his kind deed. “Fuck, if they lost it I swear to fucking God…”
Adam hums. “Just tell me what’s in it, then.”
“Seeds. And some pots so you can grow plants in your dorm room,” Ronan replies, feeling slightly embarrassed. It’s always easier to be nice when he doesn’t have to be there to see the repercussions of it. “I dreamt them so who knows it they’ll actually fucking work, but they’re supposed to smell like the Barns.”
“Ronan…” Adam says, and doesn’t say anything else for a long time. Ronan lets the silence draw out, finds comfort just from hearing Adam breathing on the other end. Eventually, Adam finds his words and says, “Thank you.”
“So don’t feel as homesick, nerd – you’ve got too many nerd things to do,” Ronan says and then, softer, “And I’ll be up next week, okay?”
“Yeah, I can’t wait.” Adam sniffs, and this time there’s a smile in his voice as he murmurs, “I love you.”
“I love you too,” Ronan says and lies back in bed.
It’s starting to feel a little easier.
